The center for Collaborative Adaptive Sensing of the Atmosphere (CAS A), an NSF Engineering Research Center, was established in 2003 to develop low-cost, high spatial density networks of weather Doppler X-band radars for sensing the lower atmosphere. This radar network system is formed on a Distributed Collaborative Adaptive Sensing (DCAS) paradigm based on a large number of small radars operating collaboratively within an information technology infrastructure to measure changing atmospheric conditions. The allocation and configuration of radar system resources within the DCAS network is based on a balance between the priority and type of user requests and the desired quality of the measurement for the given user task.
For one such measurement type, the vector velocity and vector velocity variance of observed events are both potential indicators of turbulence and hazardous weather conditions. Understanding the trade-off between the allocation of limited network resources, such as dwell time, the number of observing nodes utilized and measurement accuracy, is important for optimizing the deployed network geometry and generating observations for changing weather conditions and user priorities. In addition, timely provision of vector velocity estimates along with their confidence bounds can aid detection, visualization, and quality control.